Archive | April 2008

Baylor Woes

Apr12

WORLD magazine has an article in the most recent issue about Baylor University and Dr. Stephen Prickett, a Victorian scholar and professor at Baylor whose contract to teach and to direct Baylor’s Armstrong Browning Library has mysteriously not been renewed for the next year. I say “mysteriously,” because, of course, no one is allowed to discuss personnel matters in public for the protection of those who are being denied tenure or denied a contract renewal. Of course.

As it turns out, I have a bit of inside information, not about the non-renewal of Dr. Prickett’s contract, but rather about the kind of professor that Baylor University is losing when it loses the services of Dr. Prickett. Eldest Daughter took a class with Dr. Prickett and sat in on a graduate seminar that he taught last year. She could tell you about his scholarship and about his interest in doing adventurous and new things to make Baylor an exciting place to study. She could tell you about the production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that was staged last spring in the Armstrong Browning Library and about how much fun it was and how much she learned. And Eldest Daughter wouldn’t know as much about this item, but according to the article in WORLD, Dr. Prickett “helped to build a number of world-class collections, making Baylor a destination for Victorian studies scholarship.”

The politics at Baylor are complicated, more complicated than the one page that WORLD magazine was able to devote to the controversy, more complicated than I’m probably aware either. The chairman of the English department is quoted as saying, “There are differences of opinion about how 2012 ought to be implemented.” An understatement, to be sure.

Vision 2012 is a plan initiated several years ago (in 2000) with a dual purpose: to make Baylor into a first-class, or tier one as some call it, research and teaching university AND to retain and deepen its commitment to distinctively Christian scholarship in every academic department. Some see these goals as conflicting; others would prefer to rewrite both goals and change them into something more traditionally Baylor-ish. Some professors feel threatened by the emphasis on rigorous scholarship; others would prefer that “Christian” part of university’s heritage and focus remain subtle and unspoken. Many alumni, who wield quite a bit of power because of their financial contributions to Baylor, just want the school to be an old-style sorority/fraternity school where they can send their pampered, upper middle class and rich offspring to be finished in the Baylor tradition and not challenged too much, academically speaking.

Differences of opinion indeed.

I am still praying that Baylor will “maintain a culture that fosters a conversation about great ideas and the issues that confront humanity and how a Christian world-view interprets and affects them both” and will “assume a unique leadership position in higher education by adding new faculty, facilities and programs, all while retaining and remaining grounded in our strong Christian mission.” (quotes from the Baylor 2012 website) I think it would be a shame for Baylor to lose or reinterpret out of existence the Baylor 2012 Vision.

It looks as if it will be a bumpy road, and it’s too bad if Dr. Prickett was one of the casualties of the infighting that has become the road to 2012 at Baylor.

NPM: Poetry for Fun

Apr12

I Do, I Will, I Have by Ogden Nash

How wise I am to have instructed the butler to instruct the first footman
to instruct the second footman to instruct the doorman to order my
carriage;
I am about to volunteer a definition of marriage.
Just as I know that there are two Hagens, Walter and Copen,
I know that marriage is a legal and religious alliance entered into by a
man who can’t sleep with the window shut and a woman who can’t
sleep with the window open.
Moreover, just as I am unsure of the difference between flora and fauna
and flotsam and jetsam,
I am quite sure that marriage is the alliance of two people one of whom
never remembers birthdays and the other never forgetsam,
And he refuses to believe there is a leak in the water pipe or the gas pipe
and she is convinced she is about to asphyxiate or drown,
And she says Quick get up and get my hairbrushes off the windowsill,
it’s raining in, and he replies Oh they’re all right, it’s only raining
straight down.
That is why marriage is so much more interesting than divorce,
Because it’s the only known example of the happy meeting of the
immovable object and the irresistible force.
So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and combat over
everything debatable and combatable,
Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particulary if
he has income and she is pattable.

Poetry should be fun. What’s your favorite humorous poem?

Poet of the Day: Ogden Nash
Poetry activity for today: Write a poem, or a few lines of poetry, on the sidewalk or the driveway with chalk. See who comes by and stops to read. Note: You can only do this activity if it doesn’t rain. If April showers, wait until tomorrow.

Thanks, Julie: Reading Suggestions for a Thirteen Year Old Boy

Apr11

Julie at Happy Catholic referred her readers over here in answer to a question she received via email:

I’m needing some suggestions for books for my 13-year-old son. He’s gone through Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, and now all of Tolkien. He really needs to get out of the fantasy genre and I’m not exactly willing to trust his English teacher on choices. I’ve found some of her suggestions contain language and situations that I don’t approve. I’m sure there must be other parents out there with the same problem.

My son is an advanced reader, but not an enthusiastic one. I did have him read Night by Elie Wiesel and he was quite moved by it. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Julie got lots of good comments on her post, lots of good suggestions. And I said there that I thought the mom was right to question some of the choices that the schoolteacher might send home. A lot of young adult fiction is heavily concentrated around the themes of teen romance, sex, and youthful rebellion, perhaps because the writers or the publishers think those are the only subjects teens are interested in reading about. I’m not saying that authors shouldn’t deal with those and other sensitive themes in their young adult novels, but you know your child better than anyone. And you should know what he or she is ready to read in terms of “adult” content and what your family can tolerate or approve of in terms of worldview.

I also suggested that the mom in the email consider some nonfiction, a few good books about a subject her son is already interested in, anything from cars to sports to electronics to music. The nonfiction would “balance out” all the fantasy, and guys actually tend to like nonfiction. Lady teachers and moms, on the other hand, tend to think it doesn’t count as real reading if it’s nonfiction or if it’s a magazine. So, here are a few nonfiction and fiction suggestions for a thirteen year old boy. Links are to reviews here at Semicolon.

Fiction:
The Declaration by Gemma Malley. Dystopian sci-fi.

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. Mystery/adventure.

Isle of Swords by Thomas Wayne Batson. Pirate adventure.

Cracker: The Best Dog in Vietnam by Cynthia Kadohata. If he likes dog stories that include war also . . .

Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac. Navajo code talkers (radio operators) during WW II.

Code Orange by Caroline Cooney. Excellent adventure about a boy who almost inadvertently starts a smallpox epidemic in NYC.

Heat by Mike Lupica. Baseball fiction.

Leepike Ridge by N.D. Wilson. Action adventure in the tradition of Tom Sawyer.

Nonfiction: This list is a little tricky because as I indicated, it all depends on what the boy’s interests are. But here are a few possibilities.

An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 by Jim Murphy.

Long Way Gone by Ismael Beah. A boy soldier in Sierra Leone. It’s violent and disturbing, but if he read and appreciated Night . . .

The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay. For the mechanically minded.

More suggestions from my readers for a 14 year old male friend of mine.

Any more ideas?

Tamar by Mal Peet

Apr11

I discovered that Grandfather’s world was full of mirages and mazes, of mirrors and misleading signs. He was fascinated by riddles and codes and conundrums and labyrinths, by the origin of place names, by grammar, by slang, by jokes —although he never laughed at them— by anything that might mean something else. He lived in a world that was slippery, changeable, fluid . . . ” p. 111

Tamar by Mal Peet is a story about spies and undercover espionage and the underground during World War II. It’s the story of a man who became so enmeshed in his world of subterfuge and code and disguises that he could no longer trust anyone or even function in a straight forward and honest manner.

What a scary, insecure sort of world to inhabit! And, to some extent, it is the world we live in. We live inside a cosmic joke, and if there is no central, unchanging, organizing Principle or Answer—if this world is completely “slippery, changeable, fluid”— the joke is not really very funny. There is no Standard from which to deviate, no center.

But with God at the center, the joke becomes at least bittersweet. We are promised a happy ending, and all of the riddles, conundrums, mazes and codes make sense because there truly is an answer, not just endless, chaotic, meaningless, perpetual change. We may not find all the answers or decode all the messages, but we are assured that the answers do exist, that all will be revealed in God’s time. And in the meantime, we can enjoy the Joke.

Tamar isn’t really about all these spiritual questions or about God or meaning in life. It’s a story about a family dealing with the aftermath of horrific events that happened during World War II but continued to shape the family and their relationships up through today. The sins of the fathers, or grandfather, are visited upon the third generation.
Nevertheless, the book made me think about change and deception and mirage and reality. So, I share those thoughts and recommend Mal Peet’s Tamar to anyone who has an interest in family dynamics and family secrets, the after effects of war, and the mysteries of ethics and forgiveness and repentance.

Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

NPM: Cat Poems

Apr11

Christopher Smart was born on this day in 1722. Here’s an excerpt from his Jubilate Agno, an excerpt celebrating the glory of God and of His creation, The Cat.

T. S. Eliot wasn’t born on this day, but he did write a wonderful book of cat poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the basis for the Broadway musical Cats. Read Macavity, The Mystery Cat from that book and musical.

Poet of the Day: Christopher Smart
Poetry activity for today: Write a poem about your favorite animal or pet. Begin with the words of Mr. Smart, “For I will consider . . .”

The Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

Apr10

Rags to riches with a twist. Cinderella becomes a princess not because she happens to have a fairy godmother or happens to meet and charm Prince Charming, but rather because of her own hard work, sterling character, and inveterate honesty. Dashti/Cinderella the mugger maid is one of Jen’s Cool Girls of Children’s Fiction. Dashti is “smart, brave, strong, and independent,” a heroine to admired and emulated.

What can girls, and guys, learn from Dashti?

Perseverance: Dashti is locked in a tower as maid to a rebellious and somewhat helpless princess. They’re supposed to be locked away for a thousand days. Dashti never gives up hope that they will survive or be rescued or escape or something, even when hope is all but gone.

Loyalty: Dashti remains loyal to her mistress/princess even when the princess herself is undeserving of Dashti’s lowal service.

Hope: As noted above.

Loving self-sacrifice: Dashti sacrifices her own desires and dreams to serve and obey the princess.

Shannon Hale has written another great fairy tale interpretation that speaks to the hopes and fears we all have. Even a mugger maid can be a heroine, and even when there is no hope it still makes sense to act in hope.

Other Shannon Hale titles:

Semicolon review of Enna Burning by Shannon Hale.

Semicolon review of Princess Academy by Shannon Hale.

Semicolon review of The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale.

Heidijane’s review of The Goose Girl.

Becky’s review of Book of a Thousand Days.

NPM: Poetry Matters

Apr10

Can poetry matter? The problem with most poetry these days is low ambitions. Oh, I know, Shelley once explained that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, but what many of them want is to be the world’s acknowledged legislators. And so a huge amount of political verse is poured out these days to try to change the world. But it still has low ambitions, as poetry, never seeking to use poetry as the fundamental art by which we try to understand the human condition in general and our own times in particular.”
Joseph Bottum, First Things

Can you name any poem that has influenced you or that you believe has changed the way we “understand the human condition”?

I do think the ideas of T.S. Eliot have entered the collective consciousness. We think in terms of hollow men and Prufrock as typifying the plight of modern man. We see the landscape and our lives as a “vast wasteland” and man as lost and wandering among the ash heaps. Other than Eliot, I can’t think of a poet who has really been an “unacknowledged legislator” in the past hundred years. Can you?

Michael Gough reading T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J.. Alfred Prufrock:

Poet of the Day: T. S. Eliot
Poetry activity for today: Listen to a poet read his own poem. For links to poetry read aloud, try this list called Poetry Aloud, A Directory of Poetry Readings on the Internet.

Blood Brothers by S.A. Harazin

Apr9

Clay Gardner and Joey Chancey are best friends, even they’re as different as the proverbial night and day. Clay is poor. Joey is rich, or at least upper middle class. Clay works at the hospital to earn a little money to keep heart and soul together; Joey has no job but a very active social life. Clay’s family consists of a dead mother, a distant and cold father, and a sister who’s busy builiding her own life in another state. Joey has a close and loving family. Clay wants to become a doctor, but doesn’t have the money to even enter college in the fall. Joey, the class valedictorian and football hero, is planning to go to Duke in the fall.

When Clay gets off work and finds Joey in their clubhouse, naked and wielding a weapon with intent to do bodily harm to Clay or anybody else who gets close, he can hardly believe it’s happening. But it does happen, and Clay must find out what’s wrong with Joey, how he changed from a competent, ambitious, friendly high school graduate to a psychotic mess on the critical list at the hospital. And everyone thinks it’s Clay’s fault somehow. It all makes for a great mystery with a message that’s never preachy or heavy-handed.

Surprisingly, author S.A. Harazin is a woman. I found this fact surprising because Blood Brothers is such a very male book. The narrator and protagonist, Clay, is a guy. His thoughts are guy thoughts. I don’t know how Ms. Harazin made me feel as if I’d climbed inside a male brain when I read this book, but she did. And that’s some accomplishment for a “chick”.

Also, Ms. Harazin’s background and experience in nursing shows. Having spent a lot of time in emergency rooms myself lately (with my parents), I recognize some of the atmosphere that pervades Clay’s workplace. And I figure the author gets the details and the ambience right since some of it feels so familiar.

Some violence and crude language, but not too overpowering. Good for young adult girls. Great for young adult guys.

NPM: Keeping Them Alive

Apr9

The fact that poetry is not of the slightest economic or political importance, that it has no attachment to any of the powers that control the modern world, may set it free to do the only thing that in this age it can do —to keep the neglected parts of the human experience alive until the weather changes; as in some unforeseeable way it may do.
Graham Hough

Poetry might keep ideas alive; it may also serve to keep a person’s legacy alive. What happens to a mortal’s memory when there is no poet to immortalize?

They Had No Poet by Don Marquis

“Vain was the chief’s, the sage’s pride!
They had no poet and they died.” — POPE.

BY Tigris, or the streams of Ind,
Ere Colchis rose, or Babylon,
Forgotten empires dreamed and sinned,
Setting tall towns against the dawn,

Which, when the proud Sun smote upon,
Flashed fire for fire and pride for pride;
Their names were . . . Ask oblivion! . .
“They had no poet, and they died.”

Queens, dusk of hair and tawny-skinned,
That loll where fellow leopards fawn . . .
Their hearts are dust before the wind,
Their loves, that shook the world, are wan!

Passion is mighty . . . but, anon,
Strong Death has Romance for his bride;
Their legends . . . Ask oblivion! . . .
“They had no poet, and they died.”

Heroes, the braggart trumps that dinned
Their futile triumphs, monarch, pawn,
Wild tribesmen, kingdoms disciplined,
Passed like a whirlwind and were gone;

They built with bronze and gold and brawn,
The inner Vision still denied;
Their conquests . . . Ask oblivion! . . .
“They had no poet, and they died.”

Dumb oracles, and priests withdrawn,
Was it but flesh they deified?
Their gods were . . . Ask oblivion! . . .
“They had no poet, and they died.”

Poet of the Day: Don Marquis, journalist cum poet who was most famous for his archy and mehitabel free verse poems ostensibly written by the cockroach, archy, who couldn’t hold down the caps key on the typewriter and therefore produced poetry like this without capital letters. Archy has a bit of trouble with punctuation, too.

Poetry activity for today: Write a poem without punctuation or capital letters. Put in the punctuation and capitals and see if they improve the poem or make it worse.

Angel by Cliff McNish

Apr8

One of the main characters in Cliff McNish’s YA novel, Angel is Stephanie Rice, the socially backward homeschooled daughter of strict parents who have not until recently allowed her to have friends or significantly interact with the outside world. Stephanie wears the wrong clothes to her new school, talks about the wrong subjects, and tries way too hard to make friends. If it sounds like a bad stereotype, it is, but Stephanie does have one thing that distinguishes her from all those other formerly homeschooled social disasters out there: she’s obsessed with angels.

Freya, the other main character in the book, is also an angel-addict, but she’s faced her mentally ill fascination with becoming an angel, overcome it, been healed and been released from the mental hospital. So Freya doesn’t believe in angels anymore. However, she keeps on seeing them, especially one dark angel who scares the heck out of her.

McNish’s angels are certainly not Biblical angels. The angels in this books are more like alien beings from another part of the universe, who, having compassion on poor humans on Earth, try to do what they can to alleviate human suffering. Unfortunately, these angels are limited beings, also limited in number, and with no access to a Living God. According to the book, some angels believe in God and others don’t, just like humans in that respect. So, the angels in Angel aren’t really angels at all, not messengers of God, not beings created by a loving God to praise and worship Him, not “holy ones” set apart to the service of God. Author Cliff McNish just uses the word “angel” and then makes up his own fantastical beings who have very little in common with the angels in the Bible. I wish he had called them almost anything else, maybe gods, although they’re beautiful but essentially impotent gods.

Another problem I had with the novel: the human characters behave rather oddly, even the ones who are supposed to be sane. A father leaves his daughter alone in the house for two days just as he is considering committing her to a mental institution because he believes she’s relapsed into mental illness. Huh?
A mom locks her erratically behaving daughter in a bedroom and then leaves to pick up her husband, the girl’s dad, from work, leaving the girl locked up with the makings of a bonfire in the room. Huh?
A teacher allows a discussion in which most of the class is ganging up on and tormenting a new student in her classroom to go on for a very long time. Why?
Such anomalies abound.

Then, there are sentences like this one: “Freya was just using that as an excuse to keep him with her and talk to her.” (p. 310)

And this one: “An unaccountable need to defend herself was racing through her blood.” Adrenaline?

I found Angel absorbing in some ways, but unsatisfying in the end. I kept hoping that some of the characterization issues would be resolved, that the peculiarities of the the characters’ behaviors would turn out to have rational explanations. But they didn’t. Only New Age, irrational explanations that were ultimately unconvincing.

Not my cup of tea, but thanks to Lerner for sending me a review copy.